Defending Federal Rule That Will Ease Transition from Fossil Fuels to Clean Energy

FERC's Order No. 1000 breaks down longstanding barriers to modernizing the grid and hastening a shift away from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy.

Photo courtesy of Angelo DeSantis

What's at Stake

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s landmark Order No. 1000 breaks down longstanding barriers to modernizing the grid and hastening a shift away from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy.

Case Overview

The Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Conservation Law Foundation, and Union for Concerned Scientists—represented by Earthjustice and Natural Resources Defense Council—intervened to defend the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) landmark Order No. 1000, which breaks down longstanding barriers to modernizing the grid and hastening a shift away from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy. The mandate was challenged by an array of over 40 states, utilities, and industry groups.

Order 1000, which was finalized in July 2011, creates common-sense requirements for transparent, inter-regional planning—both to enable more efficient, cost-effective investment in transmission upgrades and to help ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place to meet state clean energy mandates (for instance, renewable portfolio standards) and other important public policies. Order 1000 also requires transmission owners to come together and agree on principles to determine who benefits from and, accordingly, who pays for the major new grid investments that we need to ensure reliable and affordable access to clean energy. Until now, the unanswered question of “who pays” has stymied new projects.

When the utilities filed their suit, they alleged that FERC had over-reached the proper scope of its authority under the Federal Power Act in issuing Order 1000. On August 18, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the mandate, roundly rejecting all of the Petitioners’ arguments and affirming that the reforms are a reasonable exercise of FERC’s authority.

Case ID

2395

Regional Office

Attorneys

Clients

Focus Area

We have an aging grid that needs billions of dollars worth of renovations and the question is how that money will be spent—on the smart grid technology that can hasten reliance on more clean energy, or on masking tape and chewing gum solutions that keep us wedded to fossil fuels.

Our aging electric grid is in need of a major renovation to deliver electricity reliably into the next century, and one way or another, that overhaul will cost us a lot of money. The question is whether we throw more money at propping up the old architecture that is designed to deliver electricity from big fossil-fuel fired power plants, or make the forward-looking investments necessary to harness the clean energy that our future requires.

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